Same numbers of permits proposed; comment period is April 9-15

TAYLOR COUNTY DEER COUNCIL

The lines of thinking were different than they were a year ago, but Taylor County’s Deer Advisory Council is recommending issuing the same number of antlerless bonus authorizations for the 2022 hunting season as it did in 2021.

A variety of factors went into the preliminary recommendations made during the council’s meeting that was held virtually on March 30, not the least of which was the knowledge that only 7,866 of the available 10,000 private-land authorizations were sold to hunters in 2021.

That, combined with the a noticeable drop in harvest numbers in 2021 compared to 2020, led the council to proposing lower antlerless quotas for 2022. Using lower projected success rates, the council is proposing a public-land quota of 250 deer with 1,200 tags, using a 21% success rate, and a private-land quota of 2,500 deer with 10,000 tags using a 25% success rate.

The 2021 quotas were 300 deer on public land and 2,800 deer on private land. Last year, the council used a success rate of 25% on public land to reach the number of 1,200 permits and a 28% success rate on private land to reach 10,000 tags.

For most council members in their two-hour-long discussion, the drop in 2021 harvest numbers was going to prevent them from even considering increasing quota and permit numbers. Taylor County is currently under a three-year “increase” population objective with a focus on boosting deer numbers on public lands. But most stated during the meeting they don’t think that growth is happening.

While Taylor County’s new DNR wildlife biologist, Emma Doden, noted the numbers weren’t far off long-term historical averages, Taylor County’s overall harvest fell 13.2% from 2020 to 2021 with 5,352 total deer being registered. The overall gun kill was down slightly from 3,828 deer in 2020 to 3,754 in 2021. More sizable decreases are shown in the ar- chery and crossbow seasons. The crossbow harvest dropped 31.4% from 2020’s harvest of 1,636 deer to 1,123. Archery hunters killed 468 deer in the county in 2021, down 33.2% from 2020. Deer registered under youth antlerless tags also fell from 469 to 347.

The total buck harvest dropped from 2,821 in 2020 to 2,686 in 2021, while the antlerless harvest dropped 20.3% from 3,347 to 2,666 despite the abundance of private-land antlerless authorizations being available.

Of the 7,866 private-land antlerless permits sold, 1,925 were filled for a success rate of 24.5%. Of 1,201 public land bonus tags issued, 208 were filled for a 17.3% success rate. Overall the success rate on 9,067 tags purchased was 23.5%.

The public is asked to weigh in on the proposed figures through an online survey that will be available on the Wisconsin DNR website April 15. Taylor County will set its final recommendations in a 7 p.m. meeting on Tuesday, May 3 at a location to be announced. It will be the council’s first in-person meeting since 2019 but also will have a virtual format.

Key discussion points

After informational presentations by Doden and DNR forestry liaison Jeff Sorenson, council chair Mike Riggle started the numbers discussion by pointing out how much things have changed for Taylor County in a year’s time.

Last spring, the council was given a 2021 pre-hunt population estimate of 40,663 deer and a predicted buck kill of 3,087. Riggle said the group was admonished by then wildlife liaison Derek Johnson and the DNR’s Deer Committee that the total quota of 3,100 antlerless deer was too low, although it was later approved by the Natural Resources Board.

This year, the DNR’s population estimation model has come up with a prehunt estimate of 35,507 and a predicted buck kill of 2,735. “The population estimation model is harvest driven so that’s really going to influence our population estimates,” Doden said. “If we have a year where the harvest is down, which we did a little bit this year, then our estimate is going to be down a little bit.”

“I would’ve expected my pre-hunt population this year, being that we didn’t meet our quota to be north of 40,000 or 45,000, and lo and behold it isn’t,” Riggle said. “It’s 35,000. Down about 20%.”

Some of the informational metrics presented show the population appears to at least be steady. Sorensen said the county falls in the widespread risk category for forest regeneration due in large part to deer browsing. Low winter severity indexes for the last few winters should help deer thrive. Taylor County’s fawn-to-doe observation ratio of 80 fawns per 100 does was better than the average for its eight-county North Central Forest region, which was 72 fawns per 100 does. Agricultural damage enrollments were at 16, the highest they’ve been at in the 2000s and deer seen per hour by hunters, according to the DNR’s hunter registration and random mail surveys, remained at their highest points of the past 10 years.

But the drop in harvest numbers spoke loudly to most council members, along with the inability to sell a high number of antlerless permits even if they wanted to try to increase the harvest.

As has been the case in recent years, the council felt comfortable with where populations sit on the county’s private lands. But, working backwards in a sense, the members did not want to even attempt to sell more than 10,000 antlerless tags, which eventually led to the proposed lower quota. The private-land success rates on antlerless tags was 34.1% in 2018 and held at 28.6% and 28.5% the next two years. But as typically happens when tag numbers go up, success rates go down, which happened last fall.

“The end result is the county kind of spoke with the 8,000 tags (bought),” tourism representative Allan Koffler said. “That’s all that was going to be purchased. Even though we’ve technically kind of seen a decrease I wouldn’t hate to see a little bit smaller of a number to try to help increase the deer population slightly. The end result is we’ll still probably have 9,000 tags to give out and the public isn’t going to be buying that many tags anyway. To go to crazy over numbers would be kind of pointless if we do any number over 8,000.”

“We wrestled with this last year too right?” county forester Jake Walcisak said. “We had such a high number we were all kind of uncomfortable with it. It’s that basis of do you base it on biology or sociology or try to combine the two?”

The private land quota of 2,500 deer with a 25% success rate leading to 10,000 available tags was passed unanimously. The public land numbers took a little more discussion to get to.

Deer Management Assistance Program representative Brian Bucki repeatedly pointed out the public land buck harvests of 371 in 2019, 395 in 2020 and 403 last year are the lowest of the last 15 years, including the years of 2014 with a harvest of 409 and 2015 with a harvest of 484 after severe winters were thought to have put a big dent on the county’s heavily-forested public lands.

“Right now the last three years, we are way below the years coming off of rough winters on public land,” Bucki said. “That’s telling me according to the buck harvests, if it’s that low right now, we are not increasing.”

“To me the data clearly doesn’t point to us achieving our desired increase in the public land herd,” sportsmen’s club representative Chip Courtney said. “We increased our quota and our tags last year and we ended up shooting less deer.”

Walcisak had a differing view, saying while hunting various land types last fall he saw more deer than he ever has, possibly helped by the county’s new baiting ban. And, he noted there are five Snapshot Wisconsin trail cameras on Taylor County Forest land and the number of deer sightings on those nearly doubled from 2020.

“We had one camera in the month of November during a three-week period on a scrape,” he said. “We had 23 uniquely-identifiable bucks on the county forest. We see bucks from yearlings, not many spikes this year, a lot of forks, all the way up to 4.5 to 5.5 year old 175-180 inch deer.”

Walcisak said many of the hunters he talked to were being much more selective in the deer they harvested. That may be one factor driving lower harvests along with lower hunting pressure than years past. Walcisak also said that Taylor County’s public lands just might be reaching a point where they simply can’t carry many more deer.

“Where habitat might be very good on actively-managed land, there’s a lot of holes on the landscape on certain areas of public land where we can’t put deer where the habitat can’t support them at least to any significant density,” he said. “We could very well be bumping up against carrying capacity.”

Riggle said there’s little doubt many hunters aren’t willing to harvest more than a deer or two per year any more. While it may be impossible to pinpoint, more than one person wondered how large of an effect the CWD-induced baiting ban may have had last fall. County DNR conservation warden Kurt Haas said there is no doubt in his mind it affected public land harvests.

“This was a year that even bow hunters, it seemed like they saw a lot of deer,” Haas said. “ No one was really unhappy that I talked to. It’s just whether or not they could connect with one because they’re so used to sitting over that bait pile. I would say 90% of our public land hunters, not this past year, but two years ago had a corn pile in front of them. I think that’s really a gamechanger for the next three years.”

Riggle proposed the quota of 250 for a vote and his yes vote broke a 3-3 tie. Of the dissenters, Bucki and Koffler wanted to see a lower quota and Walcisak wanted a higher one. Once the quota was approved, the 21% success rate was approved unanimously as an average between the 24.2% success rate of 2020 and last fall’s 17.3%. That math resulted in 1,200 being the number of public-land tags that would be available under the council’s recommendation.